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iSCSI SAN for Windows
iStorage Server Ultimate

iStorage Server is an IP SAN solution that allows you quickly export existing storages such as disk images, physical disks, partitions, CD/DVD-ROMs, tapes or any other type of SCSI based devices and even a variety of popular CD/DVD images to its client machines, which delivers immediate benefits allowing storage to be consolidated, virtualized and centrally managed. iStorage Server also provides RAID-1 (mirror) feature, which allows you create two devices for mirror backup, the mirror devices can be local image files or remote iSCSI devices. iStorage Server has been added support for Microsoft Virtual Disk File (VHD) and VHD snapshots at the recent release.

Compares between KernSafe iSCSI SAN and XTremeSAN
iSCSI Target Devices Types
  • Supports Standard image files and sparse image files, so disk image file size depends only on actual data usage.
  • Supports file system features such as NTFS encryption, compression, and file sharing.
  • Supports a variety of popular CD/DVD image formats, including .iso, .bin, .mdf, .cdi, .b5i, .nrg, .ccd, .sub, .img, and .raw.
  • Supports partition to disk bridged iSCSI target, support multiple partition table formats, including MBR and GPT.
  • Provides built-in iSCSI virtual disk emulation, enabling existing disk images to be exported as mounted iSCSI disks to clients. All clients can share the same content.
  • Provides security disks for each client. Optionally, each client can use a dedicated disk encrypted with its CHAP password.
  • Provides a built-in iSCSI CD/DVD-ROM emulator, allowing existing ISO images to be exported as mounted iSCSI CD/DVD-ROM drives to clients.
  • Provides a built-in iSCSI CD/DVD-RW emulator, this enables centralized DVD backup storage.
  • Provides extremely fast iSCSI RAM disks for temporary network-based data storage.
  • Provides volatile and persistent COW protection, automatically creating snapshots for each initiator with virtual write permission.
  • Provides generic SCSI device mapping, allowing you to map devices such as USB storage, tape drives, and optical scanners to initiators.
  • Provides a network-bridged method for exporting existing disks CD/DVD-ROM devices to clients as virtual iSCSI drives.
  • Provides read and write caching, using server memory to improve transfer speed and response time.
Security and Management
  • Supports CHAP user authentication.
  • Supports client IP address authentication for additional security.
  • Provides Active Directory-integrated local and remote management.
  • Provides iSCSI target portal address management, allowing iStorage Server to work behind a firewall.
  • Provides a simple and basic user management tool for managing CHAP users.
  • Includes a brand-new built-in web management platform.
Advanced and Enterprise Features
  • Provides fast replication synchronization and failover, allowing you to build a high-availability iSCSI SAN using two or more iSCSI targets.
  • Provides RAID-1 (mirror) functionality, allowing you to create two mirrored image files for backup. The image files can be stored locally or on remote iSCSI devices.
  • Added iSCSI RDMA support, including iSER and RDMA replication.
  • Supports virtual tape devices for enterprise backup.
  • Support unlimited and zero-copy snapshot.
  • Supports CDP and snapshots compatible with Microsoft VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Services), volume cloning, and incremental backup with an unlimited number of rollback points.
  • Supports Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk (.vhd) and VHD snapshots, providing instant point-in-time snapshot capability.
  • Supports multiple connections per iSCSI session, allowing configurations such as Round Robin and Weighted Paths.
  • Provides the “Hold and Update” mechanism, allowing data files to be updated from initiators to targets.
Compatibility and Scalability
  • Supports x86 and x64 systems.
  • Supports 64-bit LBA, enabling disk sizes larger than 2 TB.
  • Has no restrictions on disk capacity, total number of installed hard drives, number of CPUs or CPU cores, Ethernet ports, or amount of RAM.
  • Fully supports SCSI-2 Reserve/Release.
  • Fully supports SCSI-3 Persistent Reserve.
  • Fully supports the VMware platform and VAAI interfaces, including ATS, ZERO, and XCOPY.
  • Fully supports Citrix XenServer.
  • Fully supports open-iscsi on Linux.
  • Fully conforms to the iSCSI Standard 1.0.